2013: A year of living dangerously arrives

James A. Fussell, Kansas City Star

Updated 5:26 pm, Friday, January 4, 2013

Photo: Israel Leal, Associated Press

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People gesture toward the the Kukulkan temple in Chichen Itza, Mexico, Friday, Dec. 21, 2012. Ceremonial fires burned and conches sounded off as dawn broke over the steps of the main pyramid at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza Friday, making what many believe is the conclusion of a vast, 5,125-year cycle in the Mayan calendar. Some have interpreted the prophetic moment as the end of the world. The hundreds gathered in the ancient Mayan city, however, said they believed it marked the birth of a new and better age. (AP Photo/Israel Leal)

People gesture toward the the Kukulkan temple in Chichen Itza, Mexico, Friday, Dec. 21, 2012. Ceremonial fires burned and conches sounded off as dawn broke over the steps of the main pyramid at the Mayan ruins

We managed to make it through the Mayan apocalypse. Now let's see if we can survive — bum bum bummm! — the unluckiest year of the century.

Time to hide in the basement, all you Superstitious Sallys and Bad Luck Barneys. It's 2013.

Big deal?

It could be. National Geographic once estimated that on each Friday the 13th the economy loses more than $800 million from consumers avoiding travel, movies, dinner, weddings and more. You have to wonder: How much more will be lost in a whole year branded with the number 13?

Ignore triskaidekaphobia — fear of the number 13 — at your own risk. In blogs and bridal forums, anxious brides are pondering whether to get hitched in 2013 or postpone.

“Am thinking of a 2013 wedding,” posted one bride to be, “Jennifervola.” “Does anyone consider it bad luck to get married when 13 is involved, or am I just being crazy?”

The answers were all the same:

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“Crazy.”

“Deff being crazy.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake!”

“Jordyana” had more to say: “I'm graduating (from) college in 2013 (and) getting married in 2013. Wanna know something extra scary? I'm getting married on July 13, 2013! No, neither (my fiancé) nor I believe in superstitions. We do poke fun, though, and say we won't be cursed for getting married then since we'll have been together for seven years. Hopefully the seven will outweigh all the 13s.”

Churches say their wedding schedules are as full as ever.

“We haven't had anything slowing down around here,” said the Rev. Bill Porter of St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Overland Park, Kan. “If anything it seems the pace is starting to pick up.”

Still, some people really do worry about 2013, said Donald Dossey, founder of the Stress Management Center/Phobia Institute in Asheville, N.C. Dossey has been studying phobias for 18 years, including triskaidekaphobia and paraskevidekaphobia, the morbid fear of Friday the 13th. He estimates that up to 19 million people around the world fear the number 13.

“It will be problematic for some,” Dossey said of 2013. “They might think something ominous will happen, that they might have a wreck, get ill or even have marital problems. It's just a nagging sense of impending doom.”

But the biggest problems, he says, will come in September and December, months harboring the year's most ominous dates — Friday the 13th, 2013!

“On Friday the 13th some people won't even get out of bed,” said Dossey.

Then there are the hundreds of hotels and office buildings that choose not to have a 13th floor. Hundreds of airports don't have a Gate 13. Developers bypass 13 when numbering new homes. Or the auto industry group in Ireland that predicted sales of 2013 models would plummet by one third in that country (where they know a thing or two about luck)?

No, this has been going on a while: Long enough to stretch back to early Christianity (where Jesus was betrayed by Judas, the 13th guest at the Last Supper), and Norse mythology (where Loki, the 13th guest at a dinner party, had Balder the Beautiful shot with a mistletoe-tipped arrow, plunging Earth into darkness).

Cesar Camarillo, a machinist from Kansas City, Kan., doesn't put much stock in “curse of 13” as his grandfather called it. Just the same he'll be wearing his gold cross every day.

As they say, the best predictor of the future is the past. So if 2013 really is going to be this scary year of bad luck, as some people fear, it just makes sense that something really horrible must have happened 100 years ago in the last year that ended in 13.

OK, how's this? On Feb. 3, 1913, the states ratified the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving the government the power to impose and collect ... income tax.